Return To Spring 1996 Index
Return To Spring 1996 Index
Following the publication of our article Air Disaster Waiting To Happen, Britain's Department of Transport has finally replied, to our serious concerns over air safety in aircraft leaving British Airports.
They claim that air rushing in through emergency doors is not a safety issue, and that instruments in the flight deck would display any serious losses in cabin pressure. It makes one wonder if the families of the two hundred passengers who died recently when a Turkish owned aircraft plunged onto the side of a South American Mountain, will receive any comfort from these bland assurances. Of course they won't!
Neither do we! The aircraft in the South American crash had a fault with its speedometer, and was flying much slower that the flight crew thought and stalled when it tried to climb.
Even more worrying, the Department makes no mention of our demands that a facility should be available for passengers to alert safety authorities of potentially life threatening faults with aircraft.
Will it only take a disaster on UK soil before the Department of Transport takes our concerns seriously?
If you are flying to or from a British airport and spot something wrong with the plane, inform the flight crew. Then, make a detailed description of the fault, together with the name of the person(s) you spoke to. Try to photograph the defect if you can. And we'd like to hear about it too!
